Burle Marx no Sítio

Abstract

Roberto Burle Marx transcended the title of "landscape architect of the 20th century." A multifaceted creator and collector of passions, his work crossed disciplinary boundaries and resisted simplistic categorizations. Yet his legacy often remains reduced to stereotypes or idealized images of tropical gardens, overshadowing the depth of his creative thinking. This dissertation emerges from the concern about such misrepresentation and proposes an in-depth investigation of his artistic 'persona' legacy. But how can such a vast and plural vision be deciphered? The analysis of a single project could offer a more delimited methodological path. Yet how to choose a representative work within a trajectory that encompasses more than two thousand landscape projects, in addition to multiple other artistic expressions? Faced with this impasse, the research advances a proposal: what if the key to unlocking his creative universe were not in any specific project, but rather in the intimate territory where his mind and hand experimented freely - the Sítio Santo Antônio da Bica? More than a residence or a botanical collection, the Sítio functioned as Burle Marx's central laboratory, the space where he materialized his singular worldview. In this microcosm, diverse elements - plants, stones, water, art, and architecture - intertwine to compose a true 'Gesamtkunstwerk', a total work of art. To analyze it, this research combines documentary study, original architectural representations, and a phenomenological reading of space. Axonometric drawings produced specifically for this dissertation reveal the structural logic of the ensemble, which, allied with a sensitive written narrative, seeks to "teleport" the reader into the experience of the place - offering an integral understanding that embraces both its architectural structure and its inhabited dimension. Therefore, the aim is not merely to safeguard a legacy, but to propose a complex and critical reading in which space emerges as a living and poetic experience. The purpose is to open new interpretive paths that recognize Burle Marx not as a mythologized figure, but as a visionary creator who transformed the garden into an instrument of identity construction and Bra's'il into a possible territory for a modernity of its own - a rooted modern imaginary.